Page 79 of Once A Crime Lord

Gavin nodded. “My wife is everything to me.”

Angel stared at him. “You’re a fucking legend. I can’t believe you’re monogamous. You fucked around more than all of us combined.”

“Lyla’s different.”

“I gotta meet her,” Angel said and then eyed him. “You never returned our calls.”

Gavin inclined his head. “I know. I couldn’t handle them at the time.”

“We couldn’t make it to the funerals because of business,” Raul said.

“I got your cards.”

“What did you do to the fucker who did in Uncle Manny?” Angel asked.

It always came back to that. Gavin felt the familiar slap of rage and sipped his whiskey to cool down. Denying himself the pleasure of ripping Huskin limb from limb, his recent interaction with Eli Stark and the fact he had no leads on the Phantom left him feeling edgy and violent. Whiskey traveled through his body and settled in his gut, taking away the unrelenting burn.

“That’s why I’m here.”

“Why?”

“I haven’t caught him yet.”

There was a sharp silence. His cousins stared at him as if he materialized out of thin air.

Raul scooted to the edge of his seat and raised a hand. “What do you mean, you haven’t caught him yet?”

“This guy is a fucking ghost.”

He couldn’t sit still. He rose and refilled his glass. Retribution in their world was brutal, swift and done back tenfold. All of them would rip the world apart in the name of vengeance, but in the end, Lyla had been more important to him. He hunted her when he got out of prison instead of the man who claimed the title. That cost him. Now, he was trying to reclaim an underworld that was in chaos and run by a faceless, sadistic killer.

“This guy took over the underworld long enough to fuck up the whole city. It’s going to take years to clean up the filth he unleashed. He’s too smart to reveal his identity to anyone.”

“What do you need?” Raul asked.

The pressure on his chest lifted. Ever since Vinny died, he’d felt something missing. Vinny had always been at his side. Gavin didn’t question his loyalty as he’d had to question every other person in his life. There was no replacement for family. This feud with the Phantom had been going on long enough. It had been an impulse to visit his cousins, and his intuition hadn’t steered him wrong. Even though they hadn’t seen each other in nearly a decade, family was family, and they would aid him in whatever he needed.

“I need a man I can trust at my back until this is over.”

Raul and Angel looked at one another for a heartbeat and then Angel inclined his head.

“Angel will go with you,” Raul said.

He nodded. “And after I kill this Phantom, I want out.”

Once more, the Roman brothers looked at one another and then back at him.

“Out?” Angel echoed.

“My wife’s suffered enough. I promised her I would kill this guy and get out.”

Silence reigned.

“After I kill Phantom, I want to hand over the underworld to a replacement I can teach to see if he can hack it.”

Angel leaned forward. All signs of the ladies’ man vanished. His pale blue eyes were narrow and intense. “You want to give up your title?”

“Yes.”

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